Long they stood and looked at the battle scene, somehow knowing that what was depicted was a key moment in the Great War, yet neither knew enough about those cataclysmic events of sixteen centuries past to tell what circumstance was portrayed. At last Elyn turned aside and paced into the next chamber, leaving the tapestry and its mystery behind. And she came into a room that they had already explored.
“Surely there has to be more to it than this, Thork,” exclaimed Elyn, calling back to the Dwarf. “After all, there are tens, mayhap hundreds of glints on the great globe within, glints at the place of Black Mountain. And if these glints show where the Wizards be, then I ask you, where are they?”
The Dwarf followed after her. “This part is a haven, Princess: seven rooms set to shelter those in need. There is a hidden door somewhere, leading on inward, I deem,” he growled, waving a hand about. “Yet none that I can find. I think that the Mages give refuge to those who seek it, but guard their own inner secrets well. Hèl will freeze over ere we would find the other chambers within this holt.”
“But where be the kitchen, the pantry, for we must eat?” Elyn asked, making her way back toward the entry chamber. “Else this shelter will prove to be nought but a starving chamber.”
“There be no kitchen for us, Princess,” responded the Dwarf, “only what you see. Mayhap the Wizards provide no food so that would-be steaders move on.”
“Garn, but I am ravenous,” grumbled Elyn. “Let us go to wherever you’ve stabled Wind and Digger and we’ll at least get some waybread to hold off starvation.”
“My Lady”-Thork turned to the Princess-“Wind and Digger are dead. They gave to their uttermost to save our lives, and in doing so, lost their own.”
Elyn felt as if she had the breath knocked from her, and sudden tears welled in her eyes. “. . My Wind?” Her voice broke. “Ah. . no. . no.” The Princess put her face in her hands and wept.
“The sudden blizzard was more than they could withstand”-Thork’s voice fell softly-“and it slew them by stealing their lives but a bit at a time. Yet they complained not, and gave their all. Surely Elwydd will look down upon this deed of theirs and take their spirits unto Her bosom.”
A time passed, but at last Thork began shrugging into his winter gear. “I will go the places where Wind and Digger fell, gather food and weaponry and return.”
“I am going with you”-Elyn began donning her own winter garb-“though in that snow, how we will ever find them, I do not know.”
“You forget, my Princess,” said Thork, pulling on his gloves, “you are with a Châk, and I can retrace any path I have trod, even a path first stepped out in a Hèl-sent storm in raging night.”
The one to guide, thought Elyn as they strode to the closed gate, though she said nought.
Long they searched for the way to open the portal, yet they found no lever, no trip, no stone to push, no handle to pull, no crank to turn. “Garn, Thork, try to remember how it opened in the first place,” urged Elyn. “Surely if you got us in, you can get us back out.”
“Princess”-Thork’s voice held a sharp edge to it-“I know not how I came into the Wizardholt. I don’t remember entering. All I seem to remember is my sire calling to me, yet that cannot be. I was spent, in mind as well as body.”
“Aye”-Elyn’s words were soft-“from lugging me about.”
The Princess slumped down to the floor, her back to the wall. “Rach! If I had only been conscious, then perhaps I could be of some help. As it is. .”
Frustrated, Thork slammed the butt of his fist against the iron portal. “By Adon!” he vented, “this door-”
— And at that moment the gate began to open outward, and through the widening crack could be seen bright sunshine upon the snow.
Elyn scrambled to her feet. “How did you do that?”
“I do not know for certain, my Lady,” answered Thork, “yet I have my suspicions.”
Elyn started through the gate, but Thork clutched her by the arm. “Hold. We must see that we can get back in ere we leave.”
They waited until the portal was full open, then stepped back into the depths of the chamber, and slowly the doors closed. When they were full shut, Thork stepped to the gate and softly said, “Adon.” Once again the iron doors swung wide.
Thork called to Elyn: “I will step outside. If the gate does not open for me, come to here and say ‘Adon,’ and let me back inside.”
Out stepped the Dwarf, the gates closing behind, and in a moment he was back in. In wonder, he ran his fingers across the carven iron portal. “By word alone does this gate open,” he breathed. “The only other that I know which does the same is the Dusken Door at the western end of mighty Kraggen-cor.”
“Word, winch, or lever, I care not,” said Elyn, “for if we do not go get some food, the next person to this sanctuary will find nought but our two skeletons: one chewing upon stone, the other admiring an iron door.”
Choking back laughter, Thork held out a hand to Elyn, bidding her to come forth; and the Princess took his grip in hers, and hand in hand the two of them stepped out into the bright sunlight and strode down the mountain.
And in a dark castle to the north an unseen nimbus about a silveron warhammer began to pulsate, but no one was there to perceive it.
Elyn knelt beside the frozen body of Wind, tears streaming down her face. Behind her stood Thork, the Dwarf’s unerring instinct having first led them to Digger, and then on to Wind, both mounts buried ’neath the snow. And they had dug down through the drifts and stripped the gear from the storm-killed beasts, preparing to take it back to the Wizardholt. Yet Elyn could not bear to leave the body of Wind behind, at the mercy of the elements, though she knew that she must.
Thork cleared his throat. “Princess, I would have you remember the tale of the Winter King and the Queen of Summer, and of the great noble beasts that protected her. Your Wind was like that, protecting her Queen; let her join the others within the ice, and perhaps one day if they truly rise again she will be with them, her great heart once more filled with life, her spirit dedicated to a noble cause.”
Elyn rose from the snow and slung her arms about Thork and wept, and after a while they shouldered the gear and slowly made their way through the snow and back up the slopes, back into the sanctuary of Black Mountain.
Two more days they spent within the Wizardholt, studying the great globe, assuming that the cluster of silvery sparkles marked where they were, and that the black gleam just to the north was Andrak’s holt. And they gauged how far they would have to travel by measuring the distances between other places, known places, along the surface of the sphere, thereby obtaining a scale. And they judged that they were some twenty-five miles or so from Andrak’s castle, twenty-five miles from the Kammerling. And often Elyn fingered the silveron nugget upon its leather thong, recalling the Wolfmage’s words, knowing that the protection it offered was tenuous at best. And so they spent two days planning, choosing which gear to take and which to leave behind, as well as speaking of strategy and tactics, though most things were left undecided, since much depended upon what they might find at the strongholt of their foe.
When he wasn’t planning, Thork spent time examining the walls of the seven rooms they had access to, using his Châk-trained senses in this stone-cut den. At last he spoke to Elyn: “If I were to have carved these chambers and wished to conceal a door leading into a deeper interior, then I know where I would have placed a secret portal.”
Elyn’s eyes sparkled. “Let us go look then, my Dwarven Warrior, and see the wonder of the Mages.”
“Nay, Princess,” responded Thork. “I would not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for if they wish to remain hidden, then I for one would let them be.”
Elyn was disappointed, yet she did not press the issue, though she did look closely at each of the walls, to no avail. Time and again, though, she and Thork did speculate upon why the Wizards were holed up within Black Mountain, and what they might be hiding from. . or waiting for. Yet their conversations yielded no more than they already knew, and so the mystery of the Mages remained just that: an unsolved enigma.